The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has worked with the FBI on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) since 2007, with the purpose of investigating terrorism threats, collecting intel, and making arrests.

Generally speaking, federal partnerships are forever… especially in Forever Wars. Local law enforcement agencies have been working side-by-side with federal agencies since the Drug War began. The same goes for the War on Terror. Wars keep government agencies in good health, awash in perpetual funding and repurposed military gear. Local governments are seldom interested in ending these lucrative arrangements, whether or not the underlying activity is productive.

The other part is implied. By telling the feds to beat it, the SFPD is suggesting the FBI isn't doing much to acutally make San Francisco safer. The Joint Terrorism Task Force seems to be more about expanding surveillance and obtaining perpetual funding than preventing terrorist attacks or uncovering their conspiracies.

This much can be ascertained by the FBI's counter-terrorism efforts to date. For the most part, the FBI's terrorism busts have relied heavily on FBI informants being the brains, muscle, and wallet behind supposed future acts of terrorism. Undercover agents have pushed some of the weakest humans in the nation towards acts of violence -- acts which would likely never have materialized on their own. The FBI has poked and prodded easily-influenced people -- some elderly, some with mental problems -- into professing their support for [Current Top Terrorist Organization], helped them plan trips to [Top Terrorist-Associated Foreign Country], and purchased everything from duct tape to latex gloves to weapons for would-be terrorists that seemingly would have difficulty opening a savings account, much less coordinating an act of terrorism.

The SFPD feels it will be fine without the FBI's dubious assistance, which appears to be mostly limited to trampling civil liberties and ever-expanding surveillance with minimal oversight. The city can apparently handle the terrorism threat without federal intervention -- suggesting it's not much of a threat… and the FBI isn't much of a counter-terrorism agency.

What the city's rejection says about President Trump's orders and directives is pretty damning. What it says about the FBI and its counter-terrorism efforts is even worse.

from the and-not-a-single-officer-was-disciplined dept

More than a year after San Francisco police officers arrested public defender Jami Tillotson for doing her job, the city's Office of Citizen Complaints has issued its report. It clears Tillotson of any wrongdoing and lays the blame solely at the feet of the San Francisco PD.

First, a quick refresher, since we're discussing something that happened last January: Tillotson's clients were approached by police officers in a courthouse hallway. The officers began asking her clients questions and photographing them for a photo array. She inserted herself between the officers and the men and demanded the officers stop questioning them/photographing them without running it through her. The officers responded in the only way they knew how: they arrested her for resisting arrest -- an arrest in which she cooperated fully with no amount of resistance. (It seems like circular reasoning, but "resisting arrest" is a catch-all for other sorts of interference with police work, rather than simply resisting an arrest.)

Police arrested Jami Tillotson without cause in January 2015 and detained her in an "unduly prolonged manner without justification," the Office of Citizen Complaints concluded.

The agency also determined that there was found a policy failure on two allegations: interfering with the right to counsel and conduct reflecting discredit on the department in the case of an officer who made inappropriate comments to the media following the incident.

The report was released by the public defender's office because presumably the SFPD had no plans to. In fact, the police chief -- despite dismissing charges and apologizing to Tillotson -- still insists his officers did nothing wrong.

[H]e stood by the actions of Sgt. Brian Stansbury and the other officers who arrested Tillotson. Stansbury "had reasonable suspicion to take the pictures” and a right to do so in a public area, the chief has said.

Maybe so, but the complaint review board says otherwise. his officers may have had the "reasonable suspicion" to take pictures, but they clearly didn't have the right to continue to do so after being told not to by an officer of the court (the public defender), much less prevent her from doing her job by arresting her.

Recruits must attend two-hour classes on de-escalation tactics, which teach how to deal with people in crisis, consider proportional force options, respect the sanctity of life and slow down incidents when possible.

This is undercut, however, by a new policy so completely asinine even I'm against it, despite my theoretical ownership of timcushinghatescops.com.

New pistol training guidelines require police recruits to hear the command "threat" before they fire at targets, to shoot only two rounds at a time, and to stop and reassess threats after every two shots.

In what is likely to be referred to as the "Barney Fife Rule," officers will only be allowed to shoot two bullets at a time, no matter what the situation is.

In some cases, this won't be enough bullets. In far too many cases, this will still be too many bullets. The push towards de-escalation is undermined by a permission slip that says two (2) bullets may be fired per officer (at minimum) even if the situation would be better served by the methods discussed in the mandatory training session officers slept through/mocked/interrupted with logical questions like "the hell is this two-bullet limit?"

In the case of Mario Woods -- who was shot 21 times by five officers -- he'd have only been killed by ten bullets. I suppose this is how the SFPD has chosen to interpret "less-lethal force." On the plus side, surrounding homes/citizens are far less likely to be the recipients of wayward bullets. And it will definitely make it very difficult for any officers pulling a "Brelo" to explain why they unloaded 49 bullets in 30 seconds at a suspect from point-blank range.

What the rule does, unfortunately, is make it more dangerous to be a police officer. In exchange, it does nearly nothing to lessen the danger of being a citizen. Lose-lose. The correct response would be to throw the entire weight of the PD's upper echelon behind de-escalation training.

A two-hour class officers are forced to attend won't make the message stick. What will make it stick are rules that make it explicitly clear that lethal force is a last resort -- something that should be used only very rarely. Any shooting should be accompanied by a raft of paperwork and a full investigation, overseen by an independent review team. The "shoot first and shoot often" mentality is only partly addressed by the two-bullet limit, which itself is illogical, unworkable and -- at worst -- a guaranteed way to avoid additional scrutiny for questionable shootings. After all, if only two bullets were used (and it only takes one to kill/maim someone), then it's a by-the-book shooting that warrants no further examination.

If nothing else, the fact that the policy can so readily be linked to an incompetent law enforcement officer depicted in a Golden Era TV show should have been enough to deter the SFPD from moving forward with the initiative. It should have limited itself to altering the mindset of its officers, rather than giving them a two-bullet "out" that undercuts the department's "will this do?" approach to de-escalation.

from the you-have-too-many-rights,-brother.-let-me-ease-your-burden-by-taking-a-few. dept

A San Francisco deputy public defender was handcuffed and arrested at the Hall of Justice after she objected to city police officers questioning her client outside a courtroom…

Here's the video:

The two responses gathered by SFGate show the divide between those who represent the accused and those who haul inconvenient people away so they can continue their "work" unimpeded.

...an incident that her office called outrageous and police officials defended as appropriate.

The public defender, Jami Tillotson, was charged with the one-size-fits-all-who-give-us-any-lip crime of "resisting arrest." This charge doesn't work the way people expect it would, much to their anger, dismay and surprise. One would think that the police would need to be arresting you for a different crime and, after encountering some resistance, add "resisting arrest" to the charges. But no, apparently "resisting arrest" simply means not doing what cops say to do, no matter the legality of the request.

Tillotson was representing her client in a misdemeanor theft case. The police wanted to chat with him about an unrelated case in which he was "a person of interest." Presumably the photo-taking was part of building a lineup.

Now, the Sixth Amendment only guarantees the right to an attorney during criminal prosecution. But being a "person of interest" presents its own problems, what with it usually leading to questioning centered on gathering incriminating evidence -- either against the person being questioned or someone else on the list of suspects.

As an American citizen, you can always refuse to answer questions, especially when you're not in custody. Easier said than done, though, which is why the option of referring law enforcement to a lawyer is always on the table. Of course, police officers will try to avoid this possiblity, usually by framing the questioning as an innocuous, purely voluntary chat. They get irritated, though, when people realize this and tell them to talk to their lawyer or continually ask if they're free to go.

So, while Tillotson's attempt to defend her client from questioning related to a different crime may not have fallen under guaranteed Sixth Amendment protections, her willingness to protect her client from additional police questioning certainly falls within the bounds of what she (and her client) are legally allowed to do in a situation like this (i.e., "Talk to my lawyer.")

But the police weren't interested in speaking to a lawyer. They wanted to take pictures and ask questions without the "interference" of someone who knew how the system works. So, they arrested her for resisting arrest -- which, as the video shows, she was very clearly NOTDOING BEFORE, AFTER OR DURING THE ARREST.

Tillotson objected to the arrest, but she placed her hands behind her back and allowed police to cuff her. She never struggled or otherwise impeded the officers in their duty -- which was [WARNING: circular reasoning ahead] TO ARREST HER FOR RESISTING ARREST.

It's a mindbending, oxymoronic, ugly display of force, where might = right and anyone standing in the way of an investigation needs to GTFO. With cuffs.

Even the law prof [Is it impossible to get quotes from actual lawyers with "in the trenches" experience? Are there really that few of them?] quoted by SFGate -- who believes Tillotson erred by inserting herself between police and their "person of interest" -- had this to say about the PD's actions.

[Hadar Aviram] added, “Regardless of where the constitutional disposition is, the attorney was in no way being violent or resisting arrest or being disruptive in any way. It’s extreme and it’s bad press for (the police). I’m surprised.”

I'm not. Many officers -- far too many -- simply don't care what the public thinks of them or their actions. The detective captured here on video is among that number.

from the verification-to-be-performed-at-gunpoint dept

We recently covered a story about a lawyer who found himself approached by cops with guns drawn after an automatic license plate reader misread a single character on his plate as he drove by. The police did make an attempt to verify the plate but were stymied by heavy traffic. Unfortunately, it appears they decided to force the issue rather than let a potential car thief escape across the state line.

As I pointed out then, the increasing reliance on ALPRs, combined with the one-billion-plus records already in storage and the millions being collected every day, means the number of errors will only increase as time goes on -- even as the technology continues to improve. This person was lucky to escape with nothing more than an elevated heart rate. Others won't be so lucky... like Denise Green of San Francisco.

Green's civil rights lawsuit has just been reinstated by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned an earlier decision that granted summary judgment in favor of the San Francisco Police Department. The lower court found that the officers had made a "good faith, reasonable mistake" when they performed a felony stop of Green, which included being ordered out of her vehicle and onto the ground at gunpoint and held in cuffs for nearly 20 minutes while officers verified the plates and filled out paperwork.

It is undisputed that the ALPR occasionally makes false “hits” by misreading license plate numbers and mismatching passing license plate numbers with those listed as wanted in the database. Because of the known flaws in the system, SFPD officers are trained that an ALPR hit does not automatically justify a vehicle stop, and SFPD directs its officers to verify the validity of the identified hit before executing a stop.

Patrol officers are instructed to take two steps to verify a hit before acting on an ALPR read. The first step is to visually confirm the license plate (to ensure that the vehicle actually bears the license plate number identified by the camera); the second step is to confirm with the system that the identified plate number has actually been reported as stolen or wanted.

The opinion notes that the SFPD, at the time of the incident, actually had no official verification policy in place that designated which officer(s) should perform this task. The expert testifying on behalf of the PD indicated that it would most likely be performed by the operator of the "camera car" (the vehicle with the ALPR) but was unable to point to any policy actually stating this.

So, there's one level of failure. It could be that all of the officers involved (at least four, according to court documents) thought someone else had handled the verification. That would be an "honest mistake," but that shouldn't allow the department to escape being held accountable for its lack of clear verification procedures.

On the night of March 30, 2009, Appellant Denise Green, a 47-year-old African-American woman with no criminal record, was driving her vehicle, a 1992 burgundy Lexus ES 300 with license plate number 5SOW350, on Mission Street in San Francisco. At approximately 11:15 PM, Green passed a police cruiser equipped with an ALPR operated by SFPD Officers Alberto Esparza and Robert Pedersen. When Green drove past Esparza and Pedersen’s camera car, the ALPR misread her license plate number and identified her plate as belonging to a stolen vehicle. It was late and dark outside, which rendered the ALPR photograph blurry and illegible. As a result, Officer Esparza could not read the ALPR photograph, nor could he get a direct visual of Green’s license plate.

Esparza was currently involved in an arrest, so he radioed in the hit. He identified the vehicle as a dark Lexus with the plate number 5SOW750, one digit off from Green's actual number. Dispatch ran the number and found that the plate belonged to a stolen gray GMC truck. The opinion notes that Esparza never bothered to inform dispatch that he had not verified the plate number himself and was working from a lousy ALPR photo.

Sergeant Kim was in the area and heard the radio traffic linking the plate (5SOW750) to a grey pickup and Esparza's observance of a dark Lexus. Kim had plenty of chances to clear up the misidentified plate, but he never did so.

Sergeant Kim saw that the first three numbers of Green’s license plate matched the plate read over the radio, but he did not visually identify all seven numbers on Green’s license plate. He also radioed Officer Esparza for a description of the vehicle, and Officer Esparza confirmed that the vehicle he saw was a dark burgundy Lexus. Sergeant Kim then decided to make a “high-risk” or “felony” stop...

Because Sergeant Kim believed that Green posed a risk, he waited for backup before pulling her over. While he waited, he followed her vehicle for a brief amount of time and, at one point, even stopped behind her at a red light. At no point while he was following or stopped behind Green’s vehicle did Sergeant Kim visually confirm the entirety of Green’s license plate number, even though nothing obscured his ability to do so. Furthermore, Sergeant Kim did not confirm Green’s plate number with dispatch, but he did hear Officer Esparza inquire whether the vehicle with the plate number 5SOW750 was stolen. Sergeant Kim admits that if he had read the full plate, he would not have had the reasonable suspicion to effect the stop.

But the stop was made and Green was approached by at least four officers with weapons drawn. She was restrained, cuffed and held while the SFPD officers finally got around to verifying the plate number on her vehicle.

The SFPD, while fighting Greene's Fourth Amendment claims, chose to spin Officer Esparza's lack of verbal confirmation that he had personally observed the plate (rather than the ALPR's lousy photo) as a credible, non-verbal assertion that could "reasonably" prompt other officers into action. Sergeant Kim took Esparza's lack of information to be an affirmation of his visual verification of Greene's plate, giving him the reasonable suspicion to effect the stop. The court approaches this argument from another angle, stating that Esparza's lack of confirmation should have been an indication that Kim needed to perform additional verification.

Because of the SFPD's lack of clear policy and the Officer Kim's willingness to believe Esparza's unstated claims, the officers effected a felony stop based on very little information and a whole lot of belief. Neither of these are enough to rise to the level of "reasonable suspicion," and certainly not enough to justify the amount of force deployed -- especially considering Greene was "physically unthreatening" and compliant during the whole stop.

Once again, we see law enforcement deploying technology without guidelines for usage. (We also see Sgt. Kim's reluctance to spoil a felony stop by actually reading a license plate that was directly in front of him for several minutes...) Many police departments tend to prefer unsupervised tech, an attitude that is increasingly resulting in policy being set by lawsuit. Abuse first, settle later, and lastly, institute guidelines. It's a hell of a way to "enforce law," when everyone's being policed but the police.

from the the-iPolice dept

Update: Please read the update at the bottom of the story.

Earlier this week, News.com broke a story of yet another Apple employee losing an iPhone prototype in a bar (stop me if you've heard this one before...). Unlike the last one, this one (as far as we know) did not get sold to some tech website for a few thousand dollars. However, reports are emerging that raise some serious questions about how Apple went about trying to retrieve the phone.

A man in San Francisco, Sergio Calderon, claims that six people showed up at his door claiming to be San Francisco Police Department officers, and that they had badges. They claimed they were looking for a lost phone, but didn't say it was a prototype. The original News.com report had said that police together with Apple investigators went to the guy's house -- but the SFPD says they have no record of SFPD being involved in any such action (which it should have if they were involved). The guy whose house was searched says that no one identified themselves as being from Apple. They also threatened him and his family over their immigration status (even though he says they're all legal). Either way, he was nervous and let them search his house (a mistake) and even check out his computer. They didn't find anything.

The guy who was "leading" the search gave Calderon his phone number, and that number apparently belonged to Anthony Colon, a former San Jose police sergeant, who recently went to work for Apple. After the SF Weekly story about this came out, Colon suddenly deleted his LinkedIn page, but lots of folks have screenshots. The SFPD is apparently concerned about this, and says that if Calderon comes to them, they'll investigate whether or not Apple impersonated SFPD officers, which is a crime that is punishable with up to a year in jail. If the claims of Calderon prove true, this could become a pretty big headache for Apple, perhaps bigger than merely having an employee lose a prototype.

Contradicting past statements that no records exist of police involvement in the search for the lost prototype, San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield now tells SF Weekly that "three or four" SFPD officers accompanied two Apple security officials in an unusual search of a Bernal Heights man's home.

Dangerfield says that, after conferring with Apple and the captain of the Ingleside police station, he has learned that plainclothes SFPD officers went with private Apple detectives to the home of Sergio Calderon, a 22-year-old resident of Bernal Heights. According to Dangerfield, the officers "did not go inside the house," but stood outside while the Apple employees scoured Calderon's home, car, and computer files for any trace of the lost iPhone 5. The phone was not found, and Calderon denies that he ever possessed it.

Of course, this raises other questions about the proper role of the police. If it was a police investigation, then police should have done the search. If it was a private search, then the police should not have been present implying that it was a police search. The latest details certainly makes it sound like these police freelanced, suggested to Calderon that this was a police operation... and then never filed the proper paperwork about the whole thing.